Wills & Probate

The firm can help from preparing simple Wills to advising on complex Estates and tax planning advice.

Wills

Whether you are looking for assistance with tax planning through your will, have a very simple estate that you want to leave to a specific person or people, or need something in between, Adie Pepperdine LLP is able to offer you a tailor-made service.

Making a will ensures that your estate is dealt with by people you trust, and that you pass your estate to those you wish to benefit. If you have children under 18, a will enables you to make provision for their guardianship and their future.

If you are in a relationship where you or your partner has a child or children from previous relationships to consider, it is important that your intentions are clearly recorded in a valid will.

If you already have a will and need to update it, or have been thinking that you really should get round to making a will, (and don’t forget that a will is automatically revoked if you marry), contact us for a no obligation quote.

For an individual our charges start at £150 plus VAT for a simple will, including a meeting to take instructions, discussing any amendments by telephone or email, and a second meeting to sign the engrossed will.

For a couple our fees start at £240 plus VAT for simple mirror wills as above.

For more complicated wills, or if you require a home/ hospital visit, please contact us, so that we can give you a quotation, based on the time we anticipate it will take to draft and finalise your will.

There is no extra charge if you appoint any of the members of Adie Pepperdine LLP as an executor, and all of our fees include providing you with a certified copy of your will for your records. We will also hold the original for safe-keeping, free of charge, if you would like us to.

Please contact Clare Ella on 01522 577088 or clare.ella@adie-pepperdine.com  to arrange an appointment, or ask for a copy of our brief questionnaire to help you with your will instructions.

Lasting Powers of Attorney

We offer an efficient and friendly service to assist in the completion of the Lasting Power of Attorney forms, and register them at the Office of the Public Guardian.

Whilst most people decide to make just a Property and Financial Affairs LPA, we can also help with Health and Welfare LPAs. We will make sure that you fully understand the effects of making and registering an LPA, and will do all we can to make the whole process simple and easy for you.

Our charges include meeting with you to discuss your requirements, (including any restrictions you would like to make on the powers given to your attorneys, or details of your preferences as to how they should act), obtaining all your personal details and those of your attorneys, your certificate provider and the people who are to be notified when your LPA is registered, drafting all of the forms for your consideration, supervising your signature where appropriate, checking all of the forms and then making the application to the Office of the Public Guardian to register the LPA.

For an individual our fees are £400 plus VAT, and for a couple who are appointing each other, or the same people, as attorneys, £600 plus VAT. Our fees include making the application to register the LPA, as your attorneys cannot use the LPA until it is registered, and we advise registering your LPA as soon as it is completed. You can include a provision that, even if the LPA is registered, it is not to be used by your attorneys unless you give specific instructions, or there is medical evidence that you no longer have the capacity to deal with your affairs.

The Court fee for registering every LPA – either a Property and Financial Affairs LPA or a Health and Welfare LPA – is £130. There is no reduction in the fee if you make an application at the same time as your spouse or partner.

Please contact Clare Ella on 01522 577088 or clare.ella@adie-pepperdine.com  to arrange an appointment.

The Administration of Estates/ Probate

The death of someone we care about is always a difficult time, and having to cope with all the related paperwork for the administration of their estate only adds to the pressure.

A person’s ‘estate’ is everything that they own at the date of their death. The administration of the estate involves valuing any property, collecting in any money that is owed, paying any debts due (including any taxes) and distributing the balance to the people entitled to receive it.

Whether you are an executor, named in a will, or the next of kin if there is no will, we can help.

We will do as much or as little of the work as you would like us to. Some families and executors who know all the details of the deceased’s financial affairs, especially where there is no inheritance tax payable, just want help in completing the forms to apply to the probate registry for the grant of representation, as they have all the information to hand, and we are happy to do that.

Other executors who have no experience of the probate process, or who cannot cope with the idea of all the letters and phone calls to obtain all the necessary information to complete the forms, arrive with a box full of pieces of paper, insurance policies, bank statements, deeds, pension slips, letters and accounts and we start from scratch.

We can complete all the necessary forms, calculate how much, if any, tax is due and make the application to the probate registry. Once the grant is obtained, we can help to collect in the money due to the estate, pay the outstanding debts, and sell or transfer any of the assets as appropriate.

We aim to be transparent about our fees and give our clients a choice as to how we charge.

If the estate is simple with only, for example, a house and bank accounts, and not subject to inheritance tax, we are happy to agree a fixed fee, starting at £450 plus VAT and disbursements. Usual disbursements would be the probate registry fee (currently £45 plus £1 for every sealed copy), the oath fee (currently £7 per executor where there is a will, or £5 per administrator if there is no will), valuation fees (for example for property or shares if necessary) and - if appropriate - statutory advertisements in the Lincolnshire Echo and the London Gazette (currently approximately £210). If a land registry application is necessary then we may charge an additional fee and there may be land registry fees based on the value of the property.

If the estate is more complicated, particularly where it is above the inheritance tax threshold (currently £325,000), we give you two options, net of disbursements.

Option A includes a time-based element and a value element. The first part is the time spent dealing with your matter such as meetings with you, drafting and considering correspondence, reading and preparing papers, completing forms, and making and receiving telephone calls.  This time is charged at an hourly rate of £150.00 plus VAT. The value element is a percentage of the gross value of the estate. The percentage charged depends on the value of the estate but would usually be between 0.5% and 1%.

Option B is a fixed figure based on a percentage of the gross estate. For estates less than £325,000 this would usually be 0.5% to 1%, between £325,000 and £750,000 - 0.75% to 1%, and above £750,000 - 1% to 1.5% depending on the nature of the assets in the estate. These figures are only general estimates and every case will be looked at individually to ensure that our costs reflect the amount of work done and the level of responsibility assumed.

If any of our members are appointed as executors in a will, we make no extra charges in addition to our usual fees for assisting in the administration of an estate.

We may sometimes ask for disbursements, such as the probate registry fee and oath fees, to be paid by you, but our costs will not usually be invoiced until after estate monies are available to pay them. We will always discuss our interim invoices with you before issuing them.

We provide a personal service where the person you meet will be the person who deals with you throughout. We will keep in contact with you at every stage of the process and are confident that we can offer both a service and a level of fees that will match any other local probate practitioners, including Co-operative Legal Services. If you come in to see us with a written quotation for providing the same services that you would like us to provide for you, we will always seek to match it and will usually be able to quote a reduction of up to 10%

Adie Pepperdine LLP seeks to support local charities, and if you instruct us to act in the administration of an estate, on completion of the distribution we will make a donation of £200 to your choice of either St Barnabas Hospice Lincoln (registered Charity no. 1053814), such other hospice that you choose, or Lincolnshire Integrated Voluntary Emergency Service (registered Charity no. 1098364 ).

Please contact Clare Ella, 01522 577088 or clare.ella@adie-pepperdine.com  to arrange a free initial consultation.

Clare Ella

Clare joined Adie Pepperdine LLP in November 2011 after a varied career in and out of the legal profession.

Whilst donning a robe to represent Earl Spencer at a preliminary hearing in one of his libel actions in the 1990s was probably her one claim to fame as a London solicitor, she cites dancing with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, cycling Lands End to John O’Groats in 5 days for charity, massaging Rod Donald and Jeanette Fitzsimons - the then co-leaders of the New Zealand Green Party, singing at the Royal Film Premiere of Miracle on 34th Street in Leicester Square, holding the National mixed tandem trike record over 15 miles and having a 10 mile time-trialling PB of 21mins 48 secs and a 12 hour PB of over 247 miles as some of the far more fulfilling highlights in her life!

After qualifying Clare worked in London as an assistant solicitor in the commercial litigation department of Fladgate Fielder before taking a career break to teach English in China with VSO, work on organic farms in New Zealand, study aromatherapy and set up the administration centre for a charity in Johannesburg. Back in the law, Clare spent six years doing mostly private client work and specialising in wills and non-contentious probate, before a three-year stint at Lincolnshire Police HQ information management unit.

Here at Adie Pepperdine Clare brings her wealth of life experience, coupled with an empathy with clients from all backgrounds, and an intelligent efficiency, to our wills and probate department, as well as running our day-to-day office accounts. She is available to help with planning for the future, advising on wills and Lasting Powers of Attorney, and also to assist bereaved families and executors through the administration of estates procedures.

Each case is quoted on an individual basis.  Please contact Clare Ella for a free consultation and detailed quotation.

clare.ella@adie-pepperdine.com